I spent this last week in a great celebration
of the love and power of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. I confirmed many new
believers. I installed a dynamic new rector in a key parish. I assisted in
consecrating a wonderful man as the new Bishop of Stockport. I spent four days
in prayer and pastoral conversations with twenty-seven ordinands,
listening to their breathtaking stories of God’s power, guidance, and (in some
cases) profound healing, and praying with them for their new ministries. All
this climaxed in two wonderful ordination services, with great crowds, great
singing, great praying, and above all a delight in and celebration of God’s
presence, God’s gospel, and the power of God’s Spirit to love Jesus and make
his good news known in our diocese and parishes.

So it was with great interest that I heard that
many Anglicans had spent that same week in Jerusalem – which has been, over the years, a
special place for me, too – to celebrate the same gospel, the same God, the
same love and power of Jesus, the same dynamic and life-changing message
through the work of the Spirit. As I read the GAFCON communiqué, phrase after phrase
said to me ‘How wonderful that my brothers and sisters gathered there were
joining with me in this great adventure we call God’s kingdom!’

I warmed, too, to GAFCON’s statement of our
contemporary context. I have long believed and taught that our new century
presents new problems (secularism, pluralism, the decline of modernity with
nothing to put in its place, and much else) and that this means a great, fresh
opportunity for the gospel. I have been saying for years that, in this context,
we shouldn’t be surprised that serious challenges arise from within the church
itself, offering the world a pseudo-gospel, a caricature of the world-changing
love of God in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, an attempt to hold
the outward form of godliness while denying its real power. I have believed and
taught for years that we will have to work through these challenges if, instead
of merely being distracted and having our gospel energies soaked up, we are to
come through with the fresh message our culture (and individuals within it!) so
badly need. If mission is our priority – as it certainly is for me and my
diocese – then we should expect to face serious theological and moral
challenges, and to have to overcome them in prayer and deeper study of scripture.

And of course I have found myself involved in
the troubled situation of our Communion following the disastrous events of
2003. I have grieved at the muddled teaching which has allowed all kinds of
confusions about Christian doctrine, behaviour and even the nature of
Anglicanism to abound, with disastrous consequences. I have shared the
frustration of many at the fact that we don’t possess the kind of structures
that would enable us to deal straightforwardly and clearly with the complex
problems that have faced us. As Archbishop Rowan has said, our present
‘instruments of Communion’ were not designed to meet this kind of problem, and
we badly need to find new ways forward. I, with others, have given a lot of
time and energy to work on all this, and the Archbishop’s statement that the
forthcoming Lambeth Conference will take Windsor
and the Covenant as its basic road-map were very heartening. So I fully agree
with the GAFCON statement – and with Archbishop Rowan – that the Communion
instruments have not been able to deal with the problems, and that we need to
find better ways of going about it. Part of the genius of Anglicanism has been
to be reformed by the gospel but always ready for fresh reformations by that
same gospel: to recognise that God has more light to break out of his holy
word, and that this may lead us to do things in new ways, sometimes setting us
free from tired structures and sometimes creating new structures for new gospel
purposes. That is precisely what Windsor
is proposing, and what Lambeth will be pursuing.

What’s more, it is enormously exciting to live
at a time when new leadership is arising from places completely outside the
north Atlantic axis. Africa was one of the
great cradles of early Christianity, producing such towering minds as
Tertullian and Augustine. Most of us have long ago moved away from any idea
that Christianity, or even Anglicanism, somehow ‘belongs’ to England or northern Europe.
In my own diocese we love our link with Lesotho, and always find that
visits from our friends there bring new energy and joy to our parishes and
schools. Just as you don’t have to go to Jerusalem
to meet Jesus – he is alive and present to heal and save in every place! – so it’s obvious that you don’t have to go to Canterbury to
be part of the Anglican family. However, as I know, going to Jerusalem can help. Pilgrimage can add a new
dimension to our awareness of who Jesus was and is; it has done that for me, as
it clearly has done for those attending GAFCON. Likewise, the historic link
with Canterbury
is not to be dismissed. Cutting your links with the past can be like cutting
off the roots of a tree. Reconnecting with our roots – and, where necessary,
refreshing and cleaning them – is always better than pretending we don’t need
them. But what matters is of course the fruit. Here in my diocese, as in so
many in England,
we are refreshing our roots and seeing real fruit; but we don’t imagine we are
self-sufficient. On the contrary, we know we have a great deal to learn from
brothers and sisters in many other parts of the world, Africa
included. I would have hoped, actually, that all this would now go without
saying: that we have long moved beyond the sterile stand-off between
‘colonialism’ and ‘post-colonialism’. We are brothers and sisters in Christ.
That’s what matters.

I and my colleagues in this diocese, like so
many others, share exactly in the sense that we are a fellowship ‘confessing
the faith of Christ crucified, standing firm for the gospel in the global and
Anglican context’, sharing too the goal ‘to reform, heal and revitalise the
Anglican Communion and expand its mission to the world’ and ‘to give clear and
certain witness to Jesus Christ’. For this reason, I know that the GAFCON
leaders can’t have intended to imply (as a ‘suspicious’ reading of their text
might suggest) that they are the only ones who really believe all this, that
they and they alone care about such things. The rest of us, no doubt –
including several of us who were not invited to GAFCON – are eager to share in
any fresh movements of the Spirit that are going ahead. And as we do so I know
that the GAFCON leaders would want us to express the various questions that
naturally come to mind as we contemplate what they have said to us. Just as
they wouldn’t want anyone to swallow uncritically the latest pronouncement from
Canterbury or New York, so clearly they wouldn’t want us merely to glance at
their document, see that it’s ‘all about the gospel’, and then conclude that we
must sign up without thinking through what’s being said and why. It is in that
spirit that I raise certain questions which seem to me important precisely
because of our shared goals (the advancement of the gospel), our shared context
(the enormous challenges of contemporary society and of a church often muddled
in theology and ethics and lacking the structures to cope), and our shared
heritage (the Anglican tradition with its Articles, Prayer Books and historic
roots).

Central to these questions is the puzzle about
the new proposed structure. I am sure the GAFCON organisers are as horrified as
I am to see today’s headlines about ‘a new church’. That doesn’t seem to be
what they intended. But for that reason it is all the more
strange to reflect on what the proposed ‘Primates’ Council’ is all
about. What authority will it have, and how will that work? Who is to ‘police’
the boundaries of this new body – not least to declare which Anglicans are
‘upholding orthodox faith and practice’ (Article 11 of the ‘Jerusalem
Declaration’), and who have denied it (Article 13)? Who will be able to decide
(as in Article 12) which matters are ‘secondary’ and which are primary, and by
what means? (What, for instance, about Eucharistic vestments and practices?
What about women priests and bishops?) Who will elucidate the relationship
between the 39 Articles and the Book of Common Prayer, on the one hand, and the
14 Articles of GAFCON on the other, and by what means? It is precisely
questions like these, within the larger Anglican world, which have proved so
problematic in the last five years, and the ‘Declaration’ is actually a strange
document which doesn’t help us address them. Many at GAFCON may think the
answers will be obvious; in some clear-cut cases they may be. But there will be
many other cases where they will not. It is precisely because I share the
officially stated aims of GAFCON that I am extremely concerned about these
proposals, and urge all those who likewise share that concern to concentrate
their prayers and their work on addressing the issues in the way which, remarkably,
GAFCON never mentioned, namely, the development of the Anglican Covenant and
the fulfilment of the recommendations of the Windsor Report. I am delighted
that many of the bishops who were at GAFCON are also coming to Lambeth, where
their help in pursuing these goals will be invaluable.

In particular, though, there is something very
odd about the proposal to form a ‘Council’ and then to ask such a body to
‘authenticate and recognise confessing Anglican jurisdictions, clergy and
congregations’ – and then, as an addition, ‘to encourage all Anglicans to
promote the gospel and defend the faith’. Many Anglicans around the world
intend to do that in any case, and will not understand why they need to be
‘recognised’ or ‘authenticated’ by a new, self-selected and non-representative
body to which they were not invited and which will not itself, it seems be
accountable to anyone else. Of course, within the larger global context, not
least in North America, I can understand the
perceived need for something like this. I know how warmly the proposals have
already been welcomed by many in America whose situation has been
truly dire. But I also know from my own situation the dangerous ambiguities
that will result from the suggestion that there should be a new ‘territorial
jurisdiction for provinces and dioceses of the Anglican Communion, in those
areas where churches and leaders are denying the orthodox faith or are
preventing its spread.’ Sadly, as I suspect many at GAFCON simply didn’t
realise, that kind of language has been used, in my personal experience, to
attempt to justify various kinds of high-handed activity. It offers a blank
cheque to anyone who wants to defy a bishop for whatever reasons, even if the
bishop in question is scrupulously orthodox, and then to claim the right to
alternative jurisdictional oversight. This cannot be the way forward; nor do I
think most of those at GAFCON intended such a thing. That, of course, is the
risk when documents are drafted at speed.

In short, my hope and prayer is that the
spiritual energy, the sense of celebration, the eagerness for living and
preaching the gospel, which were so evident at GAFCON, can and will be brought
to the forum where we badly need it, namely, the existing central councils of
the Anglican Communion. I understand only too well the frustration that many
have felt at these bodies. But if GAFCON is to join up with the great majority
of faithful, joyful Anglicans around the world, rather than to invite them to
leave their present allegiance and sign up to a movement which is as yet – to
put it mildly – strange in form and uncertain in destination, it is not so much
that GAFCON needs to invite others to sign up and join in. Bishops, clergy and
congregations should think very carefully before taking such a step, which will
have enormous and confusing consequences. Rather, GAFCON itself needs to bring
its rich experience and gospel-driven exuberance to the larger party where the
rest of us are working day and night for the same gospel, the same biblical
wisdom, the same Lord.

+THOMAS DUNELM:

Executive Summary

GAFCON was a great celebration of the gospel of
the love and transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The church needs
this energy and vision. But this doesn’t mean the GAFCON proposals can be accepted
without question. The proposed ‘Primates’ Council’ is a strange body, just as
the ‘Declaration’ is an odd document which leaves many ambiguities. It gives
far too many hostages to fortune, inviting us to trust an unformed and
unaccountable body to make major decisions and giving licence to all kinds of
unhelpful activities. It isn’t so much that GAFCON should invite people to sign
up to its blank cheque. Rather, GAFCON itself should be invited to bring its
Christian vision and exuberance to the larger party where the rest of us are
working for the same gospel, the same biblical wisdom, the same Lord.